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Episode 311: Fliptronic’s Rebecca & Jordan

Pinball Profile·podcast_episode·35m 53s·analyzed·Jul 29, 2021
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claude-haiku-4-5-20251001 · $0.032

TL;DR

Fliptronic's Rebecca & Jordan discuss streaming, community, pinball collecting, and diversity initiatives.

Summary

Jeff Teolis interviews Rebecca Salem and Jordan Berger of Fliptronic, an Austin-based Twitch streaming channel focused on pinball and retro gaming. They discuss their year-plus streaming journey, diverse hobbies including embroidery and woodworking, collection growth through community connections, tournament participation, and their role in streaming the first public reveal of Deep Root's Retro Atomic Zombie Adventureland at What's Brewing in San Antonio during the pandemic.

Key Claims

  • Rebecca and Jordan have been streaming on Twitch for just over a year

    high confidence · Jeff opens with 'especially considering you've only been doing this for a year' and they confirm this timeline

  • Rebecca acquired her holy grail machine Bad Cats through community connections after driving 3,000 total miles across two trips from Denver to Austin

    high confidence · Rebecca detailed acquisition story: 'Three thousand total miles for just two pinball machines' and 'two trips from Denver to Austin driving, one being a full round trip drive and one just fly there and drive back'

  • Rebecca beat Colin McAlpine's Grand Champion score on Game of Thrones after five months of play

    high confidence · Rebecca: 'I finally beat Colin McAlpine's Grand Champion Score on it... It only took five months... Glass on? Yeah, glass on. It was on a stream.'

  • Jordan's first pinball machine was Spring Break, purchased for $500, which he restored and sold at Texas Pinball Festival 2019

    high confidence · Jordan: 'Spring break, got laid up spring break, which I found for $500 and went and picked up... took it to Texas Pinball Festival, and sold it. It was the most pristine spring break you've ever seen'

  • The Retro Atomic Zombie Adventureland reveal stream at What's Brewing drove hundreds of viewers despite Fliptronic being relatively unknown at the time

    high confidence · Jordan: 'we still got hundreds and hundreds of viewers to watch just on par with any other reveal stream from anybody else' and 'nobody really knew about us at the time'

  • Rebecca created a spreadsheet documenting female and gender non-conforming pinball content creators across Twitch, Instagram, OnlyFans, YouTube, and blogs

    high confidence · Rebecca: 'I started a list of female and gender non-conforming content creators... once it's not riddled with typos, there will be some sort of great document that I can give to people'

  • Rebecca owns embroidery machines and makes custom patches; Jeff is purchasing the same Brother embroidery model (~$600) after watching her streams

    high confidence · Jeff: 'Hand up this guy... The same one you have, because I've watched you' and discussion of Brother machine being 'entry level... around like $600'

Notable Quotes

  • “Twitch is a great platform for sharing all the stuff that we do with a bunch of people on the Internet... we don't have to be sticking to our schedule 100% all the time, and people understand that.”

    Rebecca Salem @ early in interview — Explains Fliptronic's sustainability and flexibility compared to podcast burnout

  • “The whole concept of community... someone, Paul, who hangs out with Don't Panic Flip, messaged me on Discord... 'hey, there's a Bad Cats for sale in Colorado.' And I call Jordan... Please, please, please, will you make this happen?”

    Rebecca Salem @ mid-interview — Illustrates power of community connections in pinball collecting and how information flows through discord/networks

  • “It's the only code that we've ever played because we're newbies, but it's a really great set of code to learn how to learn rules. Game of Thrones was like the first pinball machine that taught me how to learn rules on a pinball machine.”

    Rebecca Salem @ mid-interview — Shows Game of Thrones' educational value for newer players learning rule complexity

  • “I think it's not particularly the person that makes the reveal stream. It's just, I think, just the community in general... People like new toys. They like to see the reveals, no question about it.”

    Jordan Berger @ discussing Retro Atomic Zombie Adventureland reveal — Community interest drives reveal stream success, not individual streamer fame

  • “I think everybody should be able to have the opportunity to see people like them and people who share our lifestyles in our hobby.”

    Rebecca Salem @ discussing diversity document — Articulates philosophy behind creating female/gender non-conforming content creator resource

  • “I only have one claim to fame... I beat Steve Bowden in a flip frenzy tournament on Genie because he tilted.”

    Rebecca Salem @ discussing competitive tournament experiences — Humorous illustration of early competitive pinball experiences and tournament interaction

Entities

FliptronicorganizationRebecca SalempersonJordan BergerpersonJeff TeolispersonRetro Atomic Zombie AdventurelandgameWhat's BrewingorganizationDeep RootorganizationBad Catsgame

Signals

  • ?

    community_signal: Rebecca created comprehensive spreadsheet of female and gender non-conforming pinball content creators across multiple platforms (Twitch, Instagram, OnlyFans, YouTube, blogs) to increase visibility and representation in pinball community

    high · Rebecca detailed list creation effort and stated goal: 'I think everybody should be able to have the opportunity to see people like them and people who share our lifestyles in our hobby'

  • ?

    event_signal: Fliptronic successfully streamed first public reveal of Deep Root's Retro Atomic Zombie Adventureland at What's Brewing in San Antonio, driving hundreds of viewers despite team being relatively unknown and facing technical challenges with location WiFi

    high · Jordan: 'we still got hundreds and hundreds of viewers to watch just on par with any other reveal stream from anybody else' despite 'nobody really knew about us at the time'

  • ?

    community_signal: Bells and Chimes League established in Austin approximately 3-4 months before pandemic, enabling women's competitive pinball participation at local level

    high · Rebecca: 'Austin started its own Bells and Chimes League... that was a really, really, really fun time' with she winning one event and finishing 'halfway in the pack' at Houston Arcade Expo championship

  • $

    market_signal: Community interest in pinball machine reveals demonstrates strong demand for new content visibility; Fliptronic's role in democratizing access to unreleased machines during pandemic period

    medium · Jeff: 'People like new toys. They like to see the reveals' and Jordan noting reveal success was 'not particularly the person that makes the reveal stream... just the community in general'

  • ?

Transcript

groq_whisper · $0.108

0:00
It's time for another Pinball Profile. I'm your host, Jeff Teols. You can find everything on pinballprofile.com. We're also on Facebook. You can find us on Instagram and Twitter at pinballprofile. Email us pinballprofile at gmail.com. We go to Austin, Texas right now. You've probably seen these people once or twice. And if you haven't, you certainly should. Go to Fliptronic on Twitch, and that's where you'll find Rebecca Salem and Jordan Berger. How are you doing? Doing good. Hanging out. It's nice to talk to you in this format. We certainly talk a lot, but it's usually through chats on Twitch because very entertaining streams. And especially considering you've only been doing this for a year. We are Twitch babies, but I think we're growing up a little bit. It's funny in the podcast world, after about a year, year and a half, there's a little bit of fatigue sometimes with some podcasters. And they just kind of burn out or whatever, just aren't interested. The editing maybe takes its toll. Is it the same or is it different for Twitch? maybe more excitement after a year. I think it's definitely the same. I mean, we got to a point where we wanted to start exploring other things besides just pinball and go into where we would make patches or turn a pen or play other retro games. We have way too many hobbies, Jeff. That is a factor, too. We have way, way, way, way, way too many hobbies. So I think that we're really lucky in that Twitch is a great platform for sharing all the stuff that we do with a bunch of people on the Internet. So I don't think we're burned out. I think we're just like, oh. We're pretty good on taking breaks if we need to, as far as if we're just going on vacation or we just don't particularly feel like streaming a certain night. I think it's nice that we get that leeway of we don't have to be, you know, sticking to our schedule 100% all the time, and people understand that. Yeah, people are cool. There's a large variety of pinball streamers for sure, but you're right. I think I've never seen anybody else, nor be fascinated by a whole Twitch stream based on embroidery. It was mesmerizing. You got that new machine, Rebecca, and it was spectacular. And you started making patches for just another pinball podcast. And you were doing it for some other friends. And you made me one and mailed it to me for pinball profile. I'm looking straight at it. It sits right on my wall right in front of me. I mean, I wish I could take all the credit for that, but it is Jordan. That's my machine. That is Jordan's machine. So I actually have the first embroidery machine that we got picked up, and he's got the second better machine. I knew you. Okay, that's the confusion. I knew you got one, so I wasn't sure. Yeah, she got my hand-me-down.

  • Austin started its own Bells and Chimes League approximately 3-4 months before the pandemic hit

    high confidence · Rebecca: 'I really loved literally three or four months before the pandemic hit, Austin started its own Bells and Chimes League'

    • Game of Thrones
    game
    Spring Breakgame
    Buffalo Billiardsorganization
    Bells and Chimes Leagueorganization
    Texas Pinball Festivalevent
    Manu Smithperson
    Emily (Unruly Quilter)person
    Norma Jenningsperson
    Cidercadeorganization
    Path of Playorganization
    Space City Pinballevent

    community_signal: Fliptronic has expanded beyond pinball into embroidery, woodworking, retro gaming, and bad movie riffing content; sustainable content model avoiding single-interest burnout

    high · Rebecca: 'We have way too many hobbies, Jeff... we wanted to start exploring other things besides just pinball... Twitch is a great platform for sharing all the stuff that we do'

  • ?

    technology_signal: Fliptronic using portable camera rigs, hotspot connectivity, and streaming equipment (including lav microphones for future improvements) to enable remote pinball venue coverage during pandemic

    medium · Jordan detailed technical setup: 'We've got hotspots we can use... Becca's got one. I've got one... I set up all the equipment and checked the hotspot connection'

    • 3:02
    But that's how it goes. Let's talk about what that machine is, because guess who else is buying one? Hand up this guy. Oh. Really? What machine are you picking up, Jeff? The same one you have, because I've watched you. I've watched Emily from Colorado do some embroidery as well. Is it the same one? No. Hers is way more expensive. She's got like the Cadillac of embroidery machines. We have like the Ford Fiesta.
    3:29
    It's the entry level pretty much. It's still pretty impressive. I'd like to know what it is so we can pass it along. I know it's a brother. I don't remember the model offhand, but I know it should be around like $600, somewhere around there. Yeah, a very reasonable price. Emily's is one where if you're buying Emily's. It's got an LCD touchscreen, like giant iPad type thing. It's the LE version. Comes with a topper. Comes with a topper, you know, chrome armor, like all the goodies, light show. Yeah, and hers is, I believe, a Husqvarna maybe? Or no, she's got a brother. I think she has a brother. Yeah, she's got the high-end brother. And those are like thousands of dollars. But they're really cool. They're very cool. And they do like really intensive quilting, whereas ours is like embroidery only. And like tiny patches. Yeah. She's got a larger area to work with. The reason I bring Emily up is because if you watch Pinball and Cancer, Two Journeys, the great stream from Norma Jennings out of Florida, we all know Norma's story and we're all big fans of Norma. Emily made this incredible quilt of a lot of Norma's favorite Twitch streamers, yourself included at Fliptronic and some from across the pond, people in Australia. It was absolutely beautiful, very, very moving, too, for Norma to receive this. And the quilt was spectacular. I know we're talking pinball, but it was, again, this connection of the pinball community that you do on Fliptronic, that Emily, I think it's the Unruly Quilter she goes by on Twitch, and Norma Jennings, and all this wonderful community. And what I love about you on Twitch, Jordan and Rebecca, is that you are very engaging with the community on the chat line, but also to maybe rating another group when you're finished your stream. It's just this never ending community that we haven't really been able to gather because of the pandemic. And I thank you for doing what you're doing for over a year now. Oh, man. Thanks, Jeff. It's really cool. I was actually talking to my mom about it and how I would say pinball streaming has been able to give us the opportunity to get to connect with people like all over the world. We weren't involved in really a pinball community before the pandemic outside of maybe going to a couple of tournaments locally. We knew we knew a couple, but not a lot. We weren't very deep into it until we started streaming and then it just kind of blew up from there. But it's nice to now be more integrated into that community and hang out and talk to all these different people. But you give a perfect example of so many different people in this hobby of when they get hooked and it just grows and grows and grows because you've really been only in this collection for a little while. And also to the competitive scene, like I feel bad for you. You were only in it for about a year and then the pandemic happens and it stops. We were all together at Space City Pinball, the Houston Arcade Expo back in November of 19. And unfortunately, we didn't know each other at the time, but I saw some recent streams and some videos. Hey, there's Rebecca. I guess we were at the same place. I saw Jordan. You were there as well, too. But right now, this is how we stay connected. And that collection that we've seen grow and grow on Fliptronic is just reminiscent of kind of my days of getting started in pinball and going from one machine to two to three to several. And that's the case for you. Not only the collection size, but you will travel to go get some games. Yes. Yeah. Multiple times. My bad.
    6:53
    Two trips from Denver to Austin driving, one being a full round trip drive and one just fly there and drive back. But three thousand total miles for just two pinball machines. Hey, they're really good pinball machines. They were both my holy grail machines. I mean, and it all ties back to like the whole concept of community. So I'll never forget. I think Texas Pinball Festival, the first time we went, there was a machine called Bad Cats. And I am self-proclaimed obsessive cat lady. And Jordan's like, you got to see this. And I'm like, oh, my God. And I freaked out and was like, I have to have this someday. And fast forward, gosh, a year and a half later, and I've shared my story all over the Internet with how one day I'm going to have a bad cats. And someone, Paul, who hangs out with Don't Panic Flip, messaged me on Discord because we didn't have our like radiuses set up that big. And he goes, hey, there's a Bad Cats for sale in Colorado. And I'm driving to San Antonio when this Discord message pops in. And I call Jordan and I'm just like, there's a Bad Cats in Colorado. Here is the listing. I am driving to San Antonio. Please, please, please, please, please, please, please. Will you make this happen? and I ended up on the phone with a guy for a little bit and told him our story and that we would be driving and then he was ecstatic because he just wanted it to have a good home and we worked out a deal where you know he would hold it for a couple weeks and we'd eventually get out there and pick it up and it all worked out yeah no question you love your cats we sometimes see them on the stream with Guinness and Possum and Oliver and I've done a few of these podcasts where my cat Freddy has kind of popped in once in a while in fact I recorded some interviews for in Clash. And Freddie made an appearance. He knew I was getting ready to do these video interviews. And he's like, I'm going to sneak in there. Total photo bomb. Oh, my gosh. They're amazing. They're amazing. Possum is currently asleep on one of Jordan's socks and probably drooling on it because she's a drooling, disgusting monster. And I love her so much And Oliver is hanging out in the window He had dental work done I didn realize cats had to get dental work done And then it was like damn that like part of the pinball machine Amazingly none of these cats care about when we actually play pinball No. Guinness will sleep under the machines, but he won't try and get on top and chase the ball or anything. And neither do Possum or Oliver, really. You know, I think that Possum likes the light show a little bit. She likes the numbers on the LCD screen. I will say Possum really does like to watch pinball streams. She likes to sit on top of the PlayStation because the PlayStation's warm, and then she just sits and watches chat scroll on the side of whoever is streaming. So shout out to any pinball streamer who has chat. Possum really likes to watch it. Oliver doesn't care. More chat on Fliptronic to help out the cats. But your other Holy Grail game, I can see the cats maybe being fascinated by a dragon or two. You finally got your Game of Thrones. I did. And, oh, my gosh, Game of Thrones. When I was dipping my toe into the competitive circuit, whenever I would end up assigned on the Game of Thrones at Buffalo Billiards, and if anybody is listening to this and they have done any of the tournaments at Buffalo Billiards, they will remember the Pinberg setup of that Game of Thrones where there were no rubbers on the in lanes or the out lanes and lightning flippers. So when we were trying to rent machines to support our local businesses, and we were like, well, what machine can we possibly get? And we asked for, what, Iron Maiden and Deadpool? Those are both taken. And I was like, Game of Thrones. I hate it so much. I don't know how to play it. I need to learn this game. So we rented Game of Thrones, and I was obsessed. I played probably two or three hours every night just plugging away at that game. Yeah, we ended up with that machine for, what, three or four months? Maybe five. Yeah. And when Buffalo closed and then Jesse had to take it back, I was just, like, devastated. And I was like, I have to have one of these. I was okay with it because I finally beat Colin McAlpine's Grand Champion score on it. You did? Oh, yeah. It only took forever. It only took five months. Yeah. Glass on? Yeah, glass on. It was on a stream. I think there's even a clip of it somewhere. Good for you. And then George was telling us, I'm going to buy a Game of Thrones. And I was just like, George, you're going to be done with this machine in three months. When you're done with it, it's mine. Like, it's not even, I don't even think that, like, I asked. I think I just told. I was like, this is my machine. I hope you don't mind. And, you know, sure enough, he was done with it. Nick, the Finsomniac, was a lovely godparent in the time where we had high COVID rates and we were hearing about vaccine rollout. so we just kind of like held off on going to go get it. But lo and behold, the week of my birthday, we got to go and get it. And it is blinding and amazing. And I can't wait to never sleep again just to play it. I also don't know if you can hear my cat. Oh, yeah.
    11:55
    She's just howling in the background. She's staring. She's demanding food. Really intensely at us. Let me tell you something about Game of Thrones. The game itself, when it first came out, I love Steve Ritchie games, so I was fascinated by the game. I really didn't understand it because I had never seen the show. So because of the pinball machine, I had to go back and watch the show. And obviously, I think I've seen the series twice because the second time I said to my wife, I think you might like this. Oh, you didn't like the series? The end. Oh, okay. Well, Jordan hasn't read the books. I read the books. Whoa. Yeah. Yeah, and I'm sure that we will get the last two books whenever we get a Pokemon pinball machine. That's my optimism. You're going to get the prequels coming out soon. HBO's released some teasers of the, I guess, House of Dragon. I think it'll be good. I hope it's good. I really do. The lore and the world building. I'm a sucker for lore and world building, and Game of Thrones did that so well. I think what makes Game of Thrones in particular, especially after the new code that came out, It's the only code that we've ever played because we're newbies, but it's a really great set of code to learn how to learn rules. And so Game of Thrones was like the first pinball machine that taught me how to learn rules on a pinball machine. And this is the pro I'm talking about. We're not talking about the premium with the upper play field, which makes things very confusing. You had mentioned playing that at the old Buffalo Billiards, which is sadly now one of the casualties of the pandemic. but there is a new arcade in Austin that a lot of people are talking about. I know Robert Byers has mentioned Cidercade. You were only in this for a year, both you, Jordan, and Rebecca. Will you be jumping right back into it? Oh, yeah, I think so. Yes, yes, yes, yes, yes. Even though we don't try to plan to win or place or anything, just the fact of going there and hanging out with other like-minded hobbyists, talking shop about pinball is fun in itself. And going to competitions is the best way to do that. It's great. We've been on competitive circuits before outside of pinball. Before we even dipped our toes into pinball, we were going around to lots of board game conventions and playing different trading card game competitions. So we're not necessarily new to competitions themselves, but just for pinball. I am not allowed to play those card games anymore. I am way too salty. Pinball, I think, is exempt from my saltiness, maybe. Maybe. In a tournament setting, I think I am less salty than I am whenever we were trying to run pin clash challenges. And then it's like a matter of personal improvement. But I really loved literally three or four months before the pandemic hit, Austin started its own Bells and Chimes League. And so that was a really, really, really fun time getting to do that as well. And I was like, I won once. I won like dollars. but I was really proud of it and I always like to tell Jordan like and he'll watch the match play as it's going down for all of those but tournament settings are always really fun and you get to meet lots of new people and uh you know learn about I would say it's neat to learn. Who was it that you beat in a match on uh what was it? Genie oh yeah my only claim to fame literally ever is is that once upon a time I beat Steve Bowden in a flip frenzy tournament on Genie because he tilted it's fine i'll take it and that's it that's that's it i've done it once i would say i'm also really proud of uh finishing i think like halfway in the pack of women in the uh bells and chimes tournament uh houston arcade expo which was really really fun that was one of my top tournament experiences of my very limited tournament experiences but it was a lot of fun i got to meet a lot of cool people and i really enjoyed that and you got to sit in that replica viper from Battlestar Galactica. Oh my God. That was amazing. Where's my Battlestar Galactica pin, you guys? I'll take classic. I'll take remake. Okay. You know, it's funny you mentioned Battlestar Galactica. Where's that pin? You were in the gaming community before that. What kind of games would make for great pinball machines? Now, we've seen Monopoly. I know that's a classic game. Would Risk work? Would a good version of Clue work? Oh my God. Clue would be amazing. I mean, you've got Whodunit. You've got Whodunit, which is like close to a Clue-ish type game. Oh, for sure. It would be neat to see some more integrated type games like how Safecracker worked, where you have sort of a sub game kind of going on in the background. But yeah, there's tons of popular board games out there. Like you could probably get away with selling a Settlers of Catan pinball machine being such a generic like entry board game. Everybody loves Settlers of Catan. Like real basic. I think if you really wanted to have some fun with it, you could. I think Gloomhaven would be really fun. Definitely really niche. Yeah, or just in general, a new Dungeons & Dragons. Oh, absolutely. Please, please and thank you. But only if it has Jeremy Irons in it. You know about my feelings about Jeremy Irons. It's funny because I have a friend named Mike Primo who runs Path of Play, and he's a huge, huge gamer. In fact, does 24-hour game streams and has the inclusion for his charity, Path of Play, for people with family members who have autism. and it's really opened up my world to that kind of gaming community. When I hear you talk about some of these games, I know the names. I've never played some of these games and wish I could, but it really takes a lot of people to do that and like-minded people, but they're out there and that's the great thing. I mean, I guess that's kind of how I got into pinball too. I knew I liked pinball as a kid, but I didn't know there was this community. I saw one day on Facebook, oh, we're playing pinball. I'm like, what, where, wow, how? And I guess that's the great thing about the gaming community, whether it's pinball, whether it's board games, it's easy to find nowadays. Yeah, true. I'll never forget when Jordan was like, hey, so I want to get into pinball. I'm going to buy a pinball machine. And I was like, do it. For us, it all started from just a on-the-wind Craigslist purchase and kind of spiraled out of control from there. That really how it all happens which is oh hey let buy this embroidery machine Oh hey let buy this pinball machine Oh hey I going to get you that woodworking class so you can finally make a pen And I like hey babe can we get a lathe You're like, yes. It's amazing. What was the first pin? Oh, gosh. Spring break, got laid up spring break, which I found for $500 and went and picked up. And it was in pretty decent condition. It was working and playing. The play field just had some worn out, like, insert text and everything. And so being sort of the mechanically inclined person that just wants to take everything apart, I'm like, I'm going to touch up this play field and recode it. And I did exactly that. I tore it down to bare play field, stenciled and repainted the vacation inserts that it spells out, cleaned up some ball swirls, and then re-clear-coated it, let it cure, put everything back together, LED'd it out, took it to Texas Pinball Festival, and sold it. It was the most pristine spring break you've ever seen, Jeff. If you happen to have played one at Texas Pinball Festival in 2019, that was the one that I brought. You mentioned a few of these hobbies, whether it's embroidery, whether it's making pens, whether it's games, whether it's pinball. You have another hobby that we also share. It's our love for horrible movies. Oh, yes. And nobody exploits them better than our good friend Manu Smith, who, Rebecca, by the way, you hosted the red carpet at the reach-arounds for my other podcast, Final Round Pinball Podcast. So Manu does this great mystery pinball theater 3000, and on Friday nights, it's competitive bad movie riffing. And you two are absolute pros when it comes to that. We have a lot of practice. Definitely a lot of practice. We got involved with another community here in Austin. So there's a troupe of comedians locally that every Friday and Saturday would rent out a theater. and it's either a movie that they prepared for or they do this thing called Choose Your Own where people bring movies and try to pitch them to an audience and the audience votes for them and then they'll mock the movie, occasionally stopping in the middle of it to do a little skit based on whatever's happening in the movie or whatever and they'll rotate some comedians in and out. There's a core of one to two of them that are always mocking and so we got a lot of practice from watching them and also creating pitches to try and get these movies to win which Becca is way more successful at doing than I am. What have I done? Like seven? I've won seven? Six. You've won six, and I've won three. Yeah. Are you sure it's six? I think it's seven. Who won the murder she wrote? VR won. That was one of our friends. And so for the TV ones, they choose two episodes. Was that Aaron? No, that was James. James Town. I came dead last in that one, and I'd only done one before. One of Rebecca's wins, I was playing along, and I thought, okay, I've got some comedy chops, and I've done a few things in my day. I was blown away by Rebecca and others in this riffing. It's so much fun. It can be hard. It's hard. I beat Jordan in Time Cop last night. First round you did. First round I did. And I beat Becca last round. Yeah, but that time you had a keyboard and you weren't typing on your phone with your thumbs. I type all of those riffs in Ma Niu's Theater I am doing on my phone with my thumbs. Wow. And it is sweaty. I don't understand why my hands are so sweaty. but I have really disgusting sweaty hands. Which is why you wear pin gloves. I do. They're cycling gloves. They're just like gloves. But one day I'm going to have Fliptronic branded pin gloves and it's going to be amazing for those with sweaty ass swamp hands. To try and win with these movies for the choose your own you have to do a lot of research as far as what makes a good mockable movie and then watching them and trying to take notes and create a pitch out of it. And we've gone through so many movies that were like this won't fly. Like, it's not going to be funny for anybody. We've got to abandon it. And then there's, like, the gems where we think it's going to be really mockable, and we don't convince, like, the whole movie-mocking audience that, like, it's a worthy movie. And you have to, like, keep coming back with it over and over again, or you have to change your tactic or redo your pitch. And it's also fun just to, you know. Just a whole other thing to compete in. We're not competitive at all, Jeff. None, not at all. We've mentioned a few other content creators, Manu Smith, of course, with Mystery Pinball Theater 3000, but you've kind of been stockpiling a little list for content creators to show a little bit of diversity, too. Do you want to explain that, Rebecca? Yeah. So after the Twippy reveal videos came out, there was a lot of discussion within, I would say, a diverse community about like really wanting to showcase, you know, and Jeff does an amazing, all Jeffs are great. So many great Jeffs. But I think that one of the things that is really important is having diversity in the hobbies that we're in. And I see a lot of diversity, I think, when I play and when I play on location. And I started a list of female and gender non-conforming content creators. And that is Twitch streamers, that is Instagram, that is there are a few OnlyFans accounts that I have found. There are bloggers and YouTubers. And I would say one of the big goals I've had in just in general is having more diversity in the content that I consume. And I was really happy, actually, I'm really excited to find as much diversity as I did once I started really delving into it. I had a lot of help talking to other Bells and Chimes players because I can't consume all the content in the world as much as I would love to. And so I had a lot of help from other people within the community to gather all of these content creators to make this big, ridiculous spreadsheet. so that once it's not riddled with typos, there will be some sort of great document that I can give to people to have more access to diverse content for pinball. I think everybody should be able to have the opportunity to see people like them and people who share our lifestyles in our hobby. That's going to be a great list for a lot of people to check out all those different content creators. You can reach out to Rebecca and Jordan at FliptronicATX on Facebook, on Instagram, and also Twitter, and of course, watch Fliptronic on Twitch. I don't know if it was the first time I knew about Fliptronic, but it was definitely one of your most watched streams ever, and it happened in November when you decided to drive an hour south to What's Brewing and go and stream the first real reveal of Retro Atomic Zombie Adventureland. Yeah, that was wild.
    24:39
    What a day. Was it you that sent me or I noticed it on Facebook maybe? I think I sent it to you. There was an image that was basically saying, from Deep Root, saying that they were going to be on location at What's Brewing to showcase the machine and its current progress. You know, I think it was probably in one of the Bells and Chimes groups that I was in, because I'm pretty hooked into that. Yeah. And so I saw the image, and I was like, well, hey, I wonder if we can bring our cameras and check it out. And I already had Steve friend on Facebook, so I pinged him, and I said, hey, you know, all of our camera quality is pretty good right now, and I've got a rig that I can transport and stuff. Like, do you think we could come down to San Antonio, toss it over Raza and, you know, stream it for a little bit? They were like, yeah. And so, well, it was some back and forth as far as they were saying that the internet, the Wi-Fi wasn't really good there on location. And I was like, well, we've got hotspots we can use. We should be all right. Like, Becca's got one. I've got one. Like, we'll find a way, some way to get some bandwidth through. This is the way?
    25:35
    Sorry. And so I was like, hey, you know, here's our current camera set up and the rig, and we'll bring it all down. Well, you know, I'll handle it all. You just got to give us the okay. And they eventually said, yeah, sure, just bring it on down. And here's the time that we want to do it at, as long as you can limit yourself to, you know, like an hour or two and then clear it out so other people can get a chance to play it. And I was like, yeah, sure, that's fine. Like, we're probably not going to play much ourselves. We just want to capture other people playing it and see what it's like. We just wanted to get, like, the Internet to see the machine that we get to play. Like, we're in the middle of a pandemic. Nobody can get on planes and fly down to San Antonio and play this thing. We just wanted to share the experience. And we got down there, and I set up all the equipment and checked the hotspot connection, and it wasn't as good as we wanted, but it was good enough. And at least it was mostly stable, I think. And, you know, there's a couple things that I learned to improve in case something like that happens again. It was a great learning experience. I think having our lav mics would have helped a lot better than we currently have, but we didn't have that sort of microphone setup back then, so there was a lot of kind of background noise, and it was hard to really focus in and balance things. And it was just a lot going on, so for me, it was just like a really, really crazy night. Yeah I just drank coffee and played pinball and that was fun But it was crazy It was I would say the responses when we were like hey, we're going to do this thing, and people were like, wait, what? This is real? It just kind of blew up and went out of control. But the nice thing is it kind of proves also that, you know, it's not particularly the person that makes the reveal stream. It's just, I think, just the community in general. Because, I mean, nobody really knew about us at the time, I would say. and we still got hundreds and hundreds of viewers to watch just on par with any other reveal stream from anybody else. Right. People like new toys. They like to see the reveals, no question about it. And you having Raza was definitely a big tip of the cap to Fliptronic. I still can't believe they let us do it.
    27:37
    I think you're being critical, too, of yourselves because I thought the stream was fantastic, but I didn't realize behind the scenes the hot spots and everything else you had to do to make that happen. And it wasn't like it was exactly next door. You'd have to drive an hour south. So thank you again for doing that. Now, you've learned some tricks of the trades. Sometimes you can't really do anything. Like this past winter, all of us were feeling for certainly Austin, Texas, and other parts of your state with the power grid issues. Oh, yeah. Any long-term damage from that? Because I know some people's pipes were freezing and things like that. Yeah. Thankfully not for us. Becca was pretty lucky and fortunate. Her house is on the same grid as a hospital. So you never lost power? No, I had heat and water. And so it was... My house was not so lucky. No. I mean, well, the house itself is fine, but I was not on a grid that shared with the hospital, even though there was like a elderly care facility not too far away that let a hotel stay up. That was within walking distance of my house. That's where I ended up staying. But my house was without power for 90 hours, 80 hours. But no damage happened. I turned off the pipes. You know, I drained everything. And everything, when I turned it back on, was fine. He called me at like 2 o'clock in the morning to be like, hey, my power is out. And I was like, do you want to come over? Like, do you want to get here? And you're like, no, it's just rolling blackouts. And we're like, okay. And this is, you know, what happened all over the city was rolling blackouts turned into 80-plus hours. So in retrospect, you know, I would have been like, turn all your water off and get here now. And then, you know, all the snow came in. We have no infrastructure to clear that snow, by the way. Oh, yeah. No one here has four-wheel drive, really. We don't have snow chains to toss on our tires. They don't really salt the roads, so nothing. So then my phone rings at 6.30 in the morning, and Jordan is saying, Rebecca, I still don't have power. I'm in my closet with all the blankets and Guinness, and if I don't make it, I want you to know that I love you. And I'm like, Jordan. Kind of like a Jack speech at the end of Titanic. Yes. And I'm like, you're going to be fine. I mean, I woke up a little panicked and delirious. Yes. You're going to lose your cell phone battery if you're not careful. So I'm going to start calling hotels. And so I think within five minutes I had called the hotel at the street, confirmed that they had power and water. It was walking distance in case the truck didn't make it and had Jordan a hotel room, which did eventually lose water. But that was a whole other bless your heart experience. That was a week. Let's hope that is a thing of the past, too, because that was a nightmare that no one should have to endure for sure. And we need the power because we need to see Wavy Gaga and some of the other flip-tronic characters.
    30:29
    Oh, Wavy. She's so great. Yeah, that started, I think that started, Wavy, so the two men started, I think it started when we did, And, you know, it's funny, it was on my birthday last year when Deadflip was doing the, like, tournament. The Jurassic Park International streamer tournament stuff. Which landed on my birthday. And it's really funny because then I didn't know, like, I feel like I know, like, half the people that were streaming in that thing now that I didn't know when it initially happened. And we were doing that. And, again, we're not the greatest of players. We are newer to this. And I think at some point I got compared to a wacky waving inflatable arm flailing tube man. Well, they're saying you danced like Dee from It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia when she imitates dancing like a tube man. Yeah. And then somehow a year later, this has turned into we're just we're just leaning into the wacky waving inflatable arm flailing tube man gig. And Jordan was like, we should get one. And it was like, yes. OK, sure. And there she was. Yes, you have the wacky inflatable tube man, no question about it. But you've also got the emotes, too, and they even have names, the three characters. There is, and what was funny is we did a stream and we crowdsourced all of our names. So we have Wavy Gaga. Which is the green one. Yes. Flail Earnhardt Jr. Nice. Which is the red one? Yes, the red one. And then the yellow one is Tubularone, like the candy bar. Well done. You'll have to check them out on Fliptronic. And when do you stream? It's kind of a loose schedule, isn't it? I mean, we try to stick to a legitimate schedule. So our typical schedule is Tuesday nights from 8 to about 10 o'clock, 10.30 Central. And then Thursday nights, we stream 7 to about 9.30 Central. And then Sunday, we'll stream from 3 p.m. to 6 p.m. Central. We want to try to do like a late night stream every now and then, which we haven't done because we're old and lazy. But we're about 80 to 90% on that schedule. Yeah. And a great variety of games too. Oh my gosh. We're constantly changing things up. Oh my gosh. How many? Let's see. I should look at my pin side stuff because I think I've gone through maybe 20 to 30 games in the past year and we're still continuing to change our lineup. We'll probably be getting that Mandalorian thing. Anybody want to buy an X-Files? We are selling. I'm prepping the X-Files to sell. Now by the time this airs, it may be gone because that's a sought after game. Is it? Yeah, I know some people that love that. I ended up trading our Godzilla for that, plus some cash. I got some cash on my end, so that was nice. But Godzilla we had kind of beaten, so to speak. Oh, I forgot about Flash. I shouldn't have forgotten about Flash. Yeah. You're going to have to update your hardware on your Fliptronic Twitch because it doesn't even have Game of Thrones or TNA. True. We go through them so fast. He needs to update the profile. I could update the profile. I'm good about updating Pinsight. I'm bad about updating our Twitch profile. Yeah, there's even stuff on here I'm looking at right now. I need to remove some things. But what I've been trying to do personally is rotate through as many games as I can to figure out what I actually like and what I want to sort of have as bolt downs, so to speak. Because I haven't, I've only gotten my hands on, you know, so many games in the past two years. So I'm trying to, like, catch up on that experience that everyone else has to know, you know, which games have what quirks or how easy they are to beat or how hard they are to beat. I had always heard, you know, Simpsons Pinball Party was this, you know, amazing game with deep code. Like the one or two times I got to play the TPF and not knowing anything about it, I was like, okay, some of these shots are cool. I don't really get it. I don't know what's going on. And it wasn't until, you know, we did a temporary trade with somebody and had it for months that I got to actually dive into it and understand it. And it just becomes this whole different game that is now I get the hype kind of thing, right? And so I'm trying to do that with all these different machines that I can get my hands on. You've done so well in such a short time. And again, people can check you out on Fliptronic on Twitch. Rebecca, Jordan, always a pleasure to talk to you. And I will talk to you in chat just to get the cats going crazy. Oh, yes, please. They love a good strolling chat. All the best. And we will talk soon. Hopefully, maybe even see you in Texas when these borders open up and keep on streaming, keep on flipping and get back to those competitions because you're just getting your feet wet. And very, very fun to meet different people. And because you're streaming now, a lot of people are going to be like, hey, I know you too. I'm looking forward to that, honestly. It'll be fun. It has been a really interesting experience, and I got a little bit of a taste of the competitive juices. We went out to a local arcade, the Hangout Pinball Lounge, that just opened up in Taylor, Texas. They were running like a game of the month thing, and I got to GC on Adam's family. So that was great. Jordan, Rebecca, all the best. We'll talk to you soon. Thank you, Jeff. This has been your Pinball Profile. You can find everything on Pinball Profile, all your subscriptions and past episodes. We're also on Facebook. Check us out on Twitter and Instagram at Pinball Profile. Email us pinballprofile at gmail.com. I'm Jeff Teolas. I'm looking high and low, don't know where to go. I've got to double back my friends. The only way to find what I left behind. Got to double back again, double back again.